Computational analysis of big data has changed the way information is processed. Corporations analyze patterns in what people buy, how far they run, where they spend their time; they quantify habits to create more effective advertisements and cross-promotions. In academe, humanities scholars are using computational analysis to identify patterns in literary texts, historical documents, image archives, and sound, all of which has added to the body of knowledge in humanities theory and methodology. Meanwhile, many institutions and writing programs are adopting learning management systems that may digitally archive hundreds – if not thousands or tens of thousands – of student compositions from across levels and disciplines. What is our responsibility, and what is the potential, in harnessing big-data methods as composition researchers, teachers, and administrators?

Composition and rhetoric scholars have begun to adopt corpus-based computational analysis both to better understand the field as a whole – through the rhetoric of job postings (Lauer), professional journals (Mueller; Almjeld et al), and dissertation records (Miller; Gatta) – and to research student compositions, the teaching of which is the primary job of most composition and rhetoric scholars. Through data-driven studies of student entrance exams (Aull), citation practices (Jamieson and Moore Howard), revision practices (Moxley), and acknowledgment of counterarguments (Lancaster), scholars have found patterns that distinguish student writing from published academic writing, suggesting areas to target for instruction.

This edited collection will model and reflect on the research made possible by high-capacity data storage and computation, either alone or in conjunction with close reading and evaluation in context. Authors are invited to submit abstracts for chapters that focus on the rhetoric, methods, and findings of recent large-scale data studies of writing. We are especially interested in contributions that include replicable practices and/or detailed descriptions of method, with an eye toward graduate-level research, teaching, or administrative applications in the intersecting fields of digital humanities, linguistics, and composition.

The following list of topics and questions is not exhaustive, but suggestive, illustrating the range of issues to be taken up:

Abstracts of approximately 350 words should provide, in as much detail as possible, the focus and argument(s) for the proposed chapter. Abstracts and brief bios are due 1 August 2017 via Google Forms at http://bit.ly/comp-as-data. Questions can be directed to Amanda Licastro (amanda.licastro@gmail.com) or Ben Miller (benmiller314@gmail.com) with the subject line “Composition as Big Data.”

The Editors

Amanda Licastro is an Assistant Professor of Digital Rhetoric at Stevenson University in Maryland. Amanda’s fields of research include digital humanities, composition and rhetoric, textual studies, and interactive technology and pedagogy. Recent publications include a “The Problem of Multimodality: What Data-Driven Research Can Tell Us About Online Writing Practices” in Communication Design Quarterly, a co-authored chapter on “Collaboration” in Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, a webtext in the 20th anniversary edition of Kairos, “The Roots of an Academic Genealogy: Composing the Writing Studies Tree” with Ben Miller and Jill Belli, and her dissertation “Excavating ePortfolios: What Student-Driven Data Reveals about Multimodal Composition and Instruction,” which won the Calder Award for Digital Humanities. Amanda is on the Editorial Collective of The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and is the co-founder of The Writing Studies Tree. You can follow Amanda on Twitter @amandalicastro.

 

Benjamin Miller is an Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on digital research and pedagogy. He is the lead developer of the Writing Studies Tree, a crowdsourced, open-access database of academic genealogies in Composition/Rhetoric and related fields, tracing connections among scholars and institutions along lines of mentorship, education, collaboration, and employment; he has written about the WST, with Amanda Licastro and Jill Belli, in Kairos 20.2 (2016). He is also the author of “Mapping the Methods of Composition/Rhetoric Dissertations: A ‘Landscape Plotted and Pieced,’ an article drawing on big data and data visualization techniques, published in CCC in 2014. A founding editor of the open access Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, Ben continues to be an active member of its editorial collective. He received a CCCC Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship in 2012, and a CCCC Emergent Research/er Award in 2017 for Distant Readings of Disciplinarity: Knowing and Doing in Composition/Rhetoric Dissertations. He has taught writing at Pitt, at Hunter College, CUNY, and at Columbia University. You can find Ben on Twitter at @benmiller314.